Mt San Jacinto College, Menifee Campus Theatre Arts Department is proud to present Passengers, a raucous comedy by award winning TV and Film writer Sam Bobrick. The first television script he ever wrote – for The Andy Griffith Show – won the Writers Guild Award. He went on to win two more Guild Awards, and an Emmy nomination. He wrote and produced episodes of many of television's all-time classics: Get Smart, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Flintstones, Bewitched… the list goes on. He also created the long-running series Saved By The Bell, currently in worldwide syndication. When he tried songwriting, the first song he ever composed was recorded by Elvis Presley.

Sam’s heart however is in the theatre and he has devoted the last 20 years to writing over 30 plays. For him the theatre offered the freedom you very seldom get when writing for television or the movies. Most of his plays are comedies. He says, “There is nothing more satisfying to me than to sit in an audience and listen to people laugh. Although I feel there are moments of insight and enlightenment in my plays, I've never really had a depressing message I felt necessary to share with the public. My main goal has always been to entertain, to have people leaving the theatre feeling good. Life is tough enough. Why send an audience home suicidal. It only cuts into future ticket sales.” Passengers certainly fits this philosophy. It is made up of eight vignettes that take place in a bus station with stories that range from touching to hilarious and all points between.

The Director for Passengers is also no stranger to the limelight. She is Riverside born and Broadway and London’s West End award winning actress, Shezwae Powell. She has worked for many years in the performing arts as an actress, singer, director and producer. She has played lead roles in many hit shows including Cats, The King and I, Children of Eden, South Pacific and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as well as a couple of British TV series. She was the Director of her own theater company for many years and produced the critically acclaimed musical Inner City Jam.

After living and working in New York and London, she is thrilled to be back ‘home’ and passing on the torch of Performing Arts. Although she worked on TV and toured with music groups like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, like Sam Bobrick her heart is in the theater. She says, “For me, theatre at its best should make you think, feel and hopefully laugh and not necessarily in that order. I was attracted to Passengers because it manages to accomplish all three in a very entertaining fashion.”

She is also very happy to be working with this cast. She says, “Theater should reflect society and I wanted to cast the net broadly when looking for actors. I found a wonderful group of 12 actors that range in age from 21 to 70. Some are full time students and who are just starting their journey into acting and others are ‘occasional’ students who have been acting for a long time. There’ll be a lot of experience and heart on our stage and audiences should really have a good time and a good laugh.”